Researching the sociolinguistics of Creoles

Creole language practices are taken up in Chapter 5 , which reviews sociolinguistic research on Creoles and highlights issues that have to date received little attention in academic discussions due to a strong focus on structural linguistic themes, and first- and second-wave Sociolinguistics approaches. The chapter briefly explores the makeup of several Creole communities to shine a light on the sociolinguistic heterogeneity of such settings and to argue for a bottom-up approach to researching them. The main part of the chapter then explores quantitative and qualitative research on Creoles that orients towards a broad third-wave sociolinguistic approach. It discusses various linguistic phenomena as sites of ideological production and advocates for a greater focus on language ideologies and meaning-making in investigations of variation to open up new areas of research and ultimately lead to more holistic perspectives on these languages and the space they occupy in their sociolinguistic contexts. Additionally, it offers new perspectives on the (changing) social and linguistic life of Creole communities, the multiplicity of forcefields that shape language practices, and the multiple strategies that people employ to communicate their social perspectives.